What's happening with 400G?

It's happening, but maybe not quite yet except for the hyperscale clouds. Bikash Koley, CTO of Juniper Networks, provides a quick update on 400G, including a mention of the upcoming in-house silicon photonics. https://youtu.be/6fjR0ovin0Y https://nginfrastructure.com/network-automation/ ...

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Liquid deploys fiber connecting East-to-West Africa via DRC

Liquid Telecom has launched a land-based fiber network connecting East to West Africa. The coast-to-coast digital corridor follows the completion of Liquid Telecom’s new high-capacity fiber link running 2,600-km across the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The new backbone connects the company’s network on the Atlantic coast at Muanda in the DRC, via Liquid Telecom’s international subsea cable partners. It then runs directly East to Kinshasa and...

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Orange to assemble West African backbone

Orange will assemble a new international backbone serving West Africa by building a terrestrial fiber optic network coupled with submarine cables. Orange said its new network will provide large-scale international capacity to the rest of the world via connections with other submarine cables. The new network will link up all the main capital cities in the region: Dakar, Bamako, Abidjan, Accra, and Lagos. Commercial launch of the West African backbone...

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Ribbon to acquire ECI , expanding from voice to optical, SDN, NFV

Ribbon Communications agreed to acquire ECI Telecom Group for 32.5 million shares of Ribbon common stock and $324 million of cash.   ECI stockholders will also receive approximately $31 million from ECI’s sale of real estate assets. This ECI is a global provider of end-to-end packet-optical transport and SDN/NFV solutions for service providers, enterprises, and data center operators. The privately held company was founded in 1961, currently...

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Ribbon announces sudden departure of CEO

Ribbon Communications announced the departure of its President and Chief Executive Officer, Franklin (Fritz) W. Hobbs, effective immediately. No reason was given. Steven Bruny, Executive Vice President, Global Sales and Services, and Kevin Riley, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, have been appointed Interim Co-Presidents and Chief Executive Officers.  The company said it has engaged a leading global executive search...

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MTN South Africa picks Ericsson for 5G core/radio

MTN South Africa has selected Ericsson as a 5G network modernization vendor. Specifically, Ericsson will supply 5G products and solutions from its Radio Access Network (RAN), transport and Core portfolios, with commercial rollout expected to start in 2020. MTN South Africa is upgrading its core network to support 3GPP-compliant 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) architecture. 5G commercialization is planned between 2020 and 2022, with a focus on use cases...

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Mellanox extends Infiniband to 40km

Mellanox Technologies introduced its Quantum LongReach series of long-distance InfiniBand switches for connecting remote InfiniBand data centers together, or to provide high-speed and full RDMA (remote direct memory access) connectivity between remote compute and storage infrastructures. Based on the 200 gigabit HDR Mellanox Quantum InfiniBand switch, the LongReach solution provides up to two long-reach InfiniBand ports and eight local InfiniBand...

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Intel adds Sequoia Capital exec to board

Intel has added James (Jim) J. Goetz to its board of directors. Goetz, 54, has served as a partner of Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm, since June 2004. Prior to joining Sequoia, Goetz co-founded VitalSigns Software, where he assembled and led the team that pioneered end-user performance management. Prior to VitalSigns, he was vice president of Network Management for Bay Networks. Goetz currently serves on the boards of several privately...

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Orange launches first commercial 5G in Romania

Orange launched its first commerical 5G newtork in Romania. Coverage is initially provided in the main cities – Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca and Iasi – with other cities to follow throughout 2020 and beyond. The service boasts download speeds of up to 1.2Gbps and average download speeds of 600Mbps. Orange Romania is also pioneering a number of exclusive services only available to customers of Orange. These include the Number Share Service, which allows...

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